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BUDDHISM
THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
Charles S. Prebish
CHAPTER 1
The Landscape of
American Buddhism
In This Chapter
This chapter discusses the overall setting of
the American Buddhist movement. It considers the issue of who may be considered a
Buddhist in the American setting, how many
Buddhists are present in America, and the
various slines of transmission we can postulate for the various forms of Buddhism currently present.
Main Topics Covered
Who is a Buddhist in America?
How Many Buddhists are there in America?
Lines of Transmission from Asia
Who is a Buddhist in America?
The very first comprehensive book on Buddhism
in America, Emma Laymanʼs Buddhism in America,
written in 1976, devoted an entire chapter to the
question “Who are the American Buddhists?” She
estimated how many Buddhists there were in
America, where they lived, what they were like,
what kind of education and jobs they had, what
their personalities were like, how Asian American
Buddhists compared to American “convert” Buddhists, and in the case of converts, what their
prior religious affiliation was. What she did not
consider was just how one determines who is
an American Buddhist. Three years later, when
I wrote my own book called American Buddhism,
I suggested that one of the traditional ways of
identifying Buddhists in Asian countries—taking
refuge and accepting the five vows of the laity—
was probably an inadequate and even misleading
approach when applied to the American scene.
In Colombo, Sri Lanka or in Hong Kong, if
a person indicated that they “took refuge in the
three jewels,” that is went to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha for refuge; and affirmed the five
vows of the laity involving abstention from killing, stealing, inappropriate sexual activity, lying,
and taking intoxicants; it was clear that they considered themselves exclusively Buddhist despite
the fact that other religions were present in their
culture and likely even exerted some influence on
them. Unfortunately, in most cases circumstances
are rarely this clear cut. In China, it is possible that
someone might be nominally Buddhist, but also
include Taoist and Confucian beliefs and practices in their religious life. Similarly, Japanese Buddhists might include Shinto traditions in their life
as well, and the same situation exists in virtually
every Asian culture where Buddhism flourished.
It shouldnʼt be surprising then that even two
decades ago, American Buddhists defined themselves in an equal variety of quite radically different ways. Asian American Buddhists—who are
sometimes called “cradle” Buddhists—brought
the complex of identity problems mentioned
above to their involvement in Buddhist practice
in America. “Convert” Buddhists—most often of
European American ancestry—found themselves
struggling with potential multiple affiliations.
Could one be Jewish and Buddhist? or Christian
and Buddhist? If so, how did this so-called “ismcrossing” translate into individual religious life?
One clever writer even coined a new word for
Americans of Jewish ancestry who practiced Buddhism: “Jubu.” What seems clear is that the issue
22 Who is a Buddhist in America?
of religious identity is complex for both cradle
and convert Buddhists. To make matters worse,
some organizations identified members as those
who attended religious service, or meditation sessions, or were financial contributors, or attended
lectures, or were even just casual visitors to the
temple. To be sure, it was a very murky issue.
In the search for establishing some sort of
“orthodoxy” in determining who is, and is not,
a Buddhist in America, the problem is further
complicated by the fact that all forms of Buddhism, from every Asian Buddhist culture, are
present on American soil at the same time. This
is the first time in more than 2,500 years of Buddhist history that this has occurred. In Asia, each
culture only had to deal with its own variety of
Buddhism. In other words, what works as the defining characteristic for the American convert followers of a Chinese Buddhist sect might not work
for the American convert practitioners of a Buddhist tradition imported from Sri Lanka or Thailand; and neither of those sets of characteristics
might work for the Asian American followers of
those same traditions. Is there any solution at all?
My solution in 1979 tried to simplify the
problem as much as possible. I am convinced that
it remains correct and workable today, although
some additional problems can now be noted, as
we shall shortly see. If we define a Buddhist as
someone who says “I am a Buddhist,” when questioned about their most important pursuit, we
not only abandon our attachment to ritual formulas like the three jewels or five vows of the laity, that are neither workable nor even uniformly
followed, but we also provide more than a little
freedom for American Buddhist groups—a freedom in which they can develop a procedure that
is consistent with their own self-image and mission. In other words, what appears initially as an
23 Who is a Buddhist in America?
outrageously simplistic definition of Buddhist
affiliation serves the double purpose of providing a new standard and a simple method of professing Buddhist commitment while at the same
time imposing a renewed sense of seriousness
on all Buddhist groups. It also acknowledges that
not all of these “self-styled Buddhists,” necessarily join Buddhist communities. Some might
practice their entire lives in isolation as solitary
Buddhists. Equally, it doesnʼt suppose to judge
or evaluate the quality of an individualʼs religious
membership in a specific Buddhist community or
even their commitment to the Buddhist tradition.
These latter points, though, do have profound
implications for an individualʼs Buddhist practice,
as we will see in the chapter on Buddhist practice.
This yardstick of self-identification does not
compromise any specific tradition. but rather
augments and accommodates the specific requirements of each. Sometimes, amidst constant
inquiries about how to join particular communities, even well known and popular Asian Buddhist
teachers tried to approach the problem with humor. During the initial summer of Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado in 1974, for example,
one excited and interested woman, probably a
fledgling would-be Buddhist, questioned Chögyam Trungpa—a Tibetan ex-lama in exile—following one of his evening lectures about what
she had to do to be considered a Buddhist. He
smiled broadly and said, “When you go into the
hospital, on the admitting form, write Buddhist
on the dotted line where it asks for religious
affiliation.” Nonetheless, what the definition
does not provide is some means for determining an “official” membership, which of course
becomes a problem when one tries to actually count the numbers of Buddhists in America.
In more recent times, new interpretations
24 Who is a Buddhist in America?
have sought to improve on earlier attempts to
establish some sense of Buddhist identification in
America. The most persuasive, by Thomas Tweed,
simply changes the titles. He calls the cradle Buddhists “adherents;” and divides the convert Buddhists into one of two groups: self-identifiers
and “sympathizers” (or sometimes, and more
creatively, “night-stand Buddhists,” in view of the
Buddhist books that are often placed next to their
beds). For Tweed, the sympathizers are obviously
less committed than the self-identifiers, but are
no less a part of the Buddhist movement in America. In the end, virtually all the investigators and
interpreters of American Buddhism affirm the hybrid nature of all religious commitments, and then
conclude that Buddhists are those people who
simply say they are Buddhists. It is both obvious
and true. What is not so obvious is what religious
choice the children of convert Buddhists will make
in the future, and what religious choices the children of third, fourth, and fifth generation Asian
American Buddhists will make as the recollection
of their original practice dims and is replaced
by their immersion in American popular culture,
as evidenced by their common familiarity with
items like the Beastie Boys song “Bodhisattva.”
How Many Buddhists are There in America?
Because the United States Census is prohibited
from asking questions about religious preference, we will probably never have a completely
accurate total of the current number of Buddhists—or members of any religion—in modern
America. When the first researchers began gathering informal information at the beginning of
the 1970s, most agreed there were no more than
about 100,000 Buddhists, mostly composed of
Asian immigrant Buddhists, in the United States.
25 How Many Buddhists are There in America?
Various American Buddhist groups, however,
lobbied for public attention, and some even got
it, by boasting high membership figures. The
January 9, 1970 issue of Life Magazine, for example, suggested that 200,000 Americans had
joined a sect of American Buddhism known as
Nichiren Shōshū. Around the same time, another
group called Buddhist Churches of America estimated around 100,000 members. Both figures
were almost certainly inflated exaggerations.
The unreliability of membership estimates
does not mean that the number of Buddhists in
America was not growing, and growing rapidly
at that time. A number of significant factors in
post-1965 America were collectively coalescing to contribute to a huge explosion of Buddhist growth throughout North America. In the
first place, there was a change in U.S. immigration law. In 1965 a number of amendments were
added to the Immigration and Nationality Act of
1952, making it significantly easier for individuals from war-torn Asian countries to find new
homes in America. The impact was dramatic. The
Chinese population, for example, increased 450
percent from its pre-1965 figure, to 921,000 by
1990. Moreover, similar results can be seen in
the Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai, Burmese, Sri
Lankan, Laotian, Korean, and Japanese American
communities. Second, a phenomenon known as
the “counter culture” was sweeping the American
landscape, and especially so among young people.
The counter culture was described by influential
writer Theodore Roszak to be “an exploration of
the politics of consciousness.” Fueled by the writings of the literary group known as the “Beats,”
books like Jack Kerouacʼs The Dharma Bums and
On the Road glorified visions of a Buddhist-influenced way of living that sought to define a
new American lifestyle. The counter culture fed
off the social protest songs of composer-poets
26 How Many Buddhists are There in America?
like Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs, and sought to create a saner reality based on meditative reflection,
social change, the elimination of personal suffering. Third, the American religious panorama,
generally, was changing because of increasing
secularization on the social front. Traditional
religious groups within Christianity and Judaism
were losing members fast, and many of these
disenchanted members turned to alternative religions like Buddhism in their search for human
fulfillment. In other words, the religious scene in
1970s America was an incredible “market” situation, and Buddhism had a very appealing product.
It wasnʼt until 1990 that figures based on actual research on the number of Buddhists began
to appear. In 1990 a general survey on religious
affiliation was conducted by Barry Kosmin and
Seymour Lachman which suggested that American Buddhists constituted about .4 percent of
the adult population in America (then presumed
to be about 175.5 million people). If one factors in a similar percentage to accommodate
the non-adult population, a figure of around
one million Buddhists in America can be proposed. The popular media was quick to exploit
this new information. Following the publication
of their book One Nation Under God: Religion in
Contemporary American Society in 1993, Newsweek
magazine ran an article in its June 13, 1994 issue called “800,000 Hands Clapping,” and it
was subtitled “Religion: America May Be on the
Verge of Buddhadharma,” citing their findings.
In 2001, Barry Kosmin teamed with Egon
Mayer to produce a new survey called the “American Religious Identity Survey” (ARIS). It was based
on interviews with 50,281 people (slightly less
than half the number of the 1990 survey). The
preliminary results were reported in the December 24, 2001 edition of “USA Today.” The new
27 How Many Buddhists are There in America?
survey claims that the percentage of Buddhists
now has risen to .5 percent of the adult population, yielding a growth in raw numbers of 169.5
percent. Even if one again factors in similar numbers for the non-adult Buddhist population, the
overall result would conclude there are less than
1.5 million Buddhists in America. While it is significant that the survey notes Buddhists to have
the second highest membership in the 18 to 29
age group: 56 percent (with Muslims being highest in this category at 58 percent), it certainly is
not clear that these figures really are accurate.
Another approach based on actual research
was that of Don Morreale. His The Complete
Guide to Buddhist America, published in 1998 as
an updated and expanded version of his earlier Buddhist America: Centers, Retreats, Practices,
lists more than 1,000 Buddhist meditation centers in the United States and Canada. If one
added to this list the many Buddhist centers of
non-meditative traditions, the total number of
centers would be expanded considerably, possibly as high as 1500. Morreale also offers some
interesting bits of information about the growth
of American Buddhism during the second half of
this century too. Of the more than 1,000 centers
listed in his new volume, only about 2% (21 new
centers) were founded between 1900 and 1964.
By 1975, the number of centers had increased
five-fold (117 new centers), and between 1975
and 1984 the total more than doubled (308 centers), and doubled again between 1985 and 1997
(616 new centers). Theravāda and Vajrayāna
centers have approximately doubled in the last
decade (from 72 to 152, and 180 to 352 respectively), while Mahāyāna groups have almost
tripled (from 163 to 423). Moreover, Morreale has
included a new category of center which claims
no sectarian identification—creatively termed
“Buddhayāna”—as a signal of the growing trend
28 How Many Buddhists are There in America?
toward Buddhist ecumenicity, and identified by
Morreale as “poly-denominationalism.” This latter group has shown an almost ten-fold increase
in the last decade (from 14 to 135 new centers).
The above data, while interesting and impressive,
suggests that a large-scale sociological study remains the scholarʼs task for American Buddhism.
Scholars of Buddhism come to very different conclusions about the number of Buddhists
in America. In the mid-1990s, Robert Thurman,
a Buddhist Studies professor at Columbia University and a former Buddhist monk himself, told
“ABC Nightly News with Peter Jennings” that there
were five to six million Buddhists in the United
States. Thurman was probably guessing, but by
1997, a German scholar named Martin Baumann
postulated three to four million Buddhists in
America, based on his own surveys and extensive
research. Utilizing the comprehensive current
research on immigrant Buddhist communities in
the United States, it is quite likely that Baumannʼs
figure was correct for its time, and that there now
may well be many more Buddhists on America
soil. That makes American Buddhism as large
as many prominent Protestant denominations.
Where are these Buddhist centers, and how
does one go about finding them? Thirty years ago,
apart from word of mouth information, the best
bet was “The Yellow Pages.” Now one can utilize
Morrealeʼs The Complete Guide to Buddhist America,
which organizes the various American Buddhist
centers according to their tradition of sectarian
affiliation, and within each sectarian affiliation,
on a state by state basis. Contact information is
provided, as well as information (when available)
about the teacher(s) and activities. In addition,
there are many Internet sites which provide “locators” for American Buddhist groups. The best, and
most stable of these is DharmaNet International,
29 How Many Buddhists are There in America?
a site constructed and managed by Barry Kapke.
Buddhanet also maintains a Guide to North American Dharma Centers, with specific listings for
the various American Buddhist sectarian groups.
Lines of Transmission From Asia
Now that we have explored who can be considered a Buddhist in America, and how many Buddhists there might be in the United States, it is
certainly appropriate to ask how they all got here.
Are most Buddhists in America immigrants, the
children of immigrants, American born converts
to Buddhism? What is their racial background?
Are they Caucasian (i.e., European Americans),
African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian
Americans? How did all the various forms of Buddhism now present on American soil get here?
Most scholars agree that about 75 to 80
percent of the Buddhists in America are of Asian
American descent, with the remainder being
composed of American converts who are primarily of European American ancestry. There are
certainly African American and Hispanic American
converts to Buddhism, but their numbers appear
to remain a small part of the overall convert community. In other words, the easiest way to conveniently identify all these groups is under the two
broad headings of Asian immigrant Buddhists
and American convert Buddhists. Unfortunately,
these two main groups have not always communicated well with one another. In 1991, the editor of a soon-to-be-popular Buddhist magazine
known as Tricycle, editorialized that “the spokespeople for Buddhism in America have been, almost exclusively, educated members of the white
middle class,” and she suggested that Asian
immigrant Buddhists “have not figured prominently in the development of something called
30 Lines of Transmission From Asia
American Buddhism.” These remarks provoked
an angry debate which has yet to subside, and for
the most part, the members of these “two Buddhisms” practice in very separate communities.
Most recently, it has been suggested that a
far more fruitful approach is to focus not on the
ethnic/racial divide between the two Buddhisms,
but rather on the function Buddhism plays in their
respective lives. In that respect, in the Asian immigrant community, Buddhism serves an important
function in maintaining the ethnic groupʼs sense
of life and heritage. On the other hand, in the
American convert communities, Buddhism provides an alternative religious identity, offering a
worldview shift from the religion of their parents.
Because these various American Buddhist
communities practice different forms of Buddhism, it is important to understand the lines of
transmission from Asia, and there seem to be three
distinct procedures by which this has happened.
In one circumstance, Buddhism is imported from
one country to another, in this case, from Asia to
America. The catalyst for this is a “demand-driven” transmission; the host or new culture wants
this tradition, and thus it is often called “Import”
Buddhism. Sometimes it is called “Elite” Buddhism
because its proponents (that is, the “importers”)
have often discovered Buddhism through travel,
or education. And they have sufficient leisure, and
funds, to indulge their interest. Import Buddhism
is usually associated with Tibetan Buddhism, Zen,
and Vipassanā (which will be described later). A
second line of transmission is called “Export” Buddhism. It reflects the intent of an Asian Buddhist
parent community to share its Buddhist teaching
with individuals in other parts of the world. This
sort of Buddhism moves throughout the world
via missionary activities sponsored by the parent
Buddhist community. As a result, it is often called
31 Lines of Transmission From Asia
“Evangelical” Buddhism. The best known Export
Buddhist group is Sōka Gakkai International (also
to be described later), but a number of Chinese
Buddhist groups also sponsor extensive activities. Finally, there is “Ethnic” Buddhism, or that
form of Buddhism brought to America by Asian
immigrants. One Buddhist scholar has identified
this form of Buddhism as “Baggage” Buddhism,
although the term has proved offensive and insensitive to many Asian American Buddhists.
To summarize, we have seen two Buddhisms—
Asian immigrant Buddhism and American convert Buddhism—and three lines of transmission
from Asia: Elite Buddhism which is imported to
America, Evangelical Buddhism which is exported
to America, and Ethnic Buddhism which arrives
in America with the ongoing Asian immigrant
population. In subsequent chapters, with an eye
towards having a glimspe inside the spectrum of
American Buddhist communities, we shall profile
several American Buddhist groups, including an
ethnic American Buddhist community, a meditative convert community, a non-meditative mostly
convert community, and an activist community.
Key Points You Should Know
Although it is impossible to accurately estimate the total number of Buddhists in
America, the number of Buddhists has risen
dramatically following the 1965 change in
immigration law.
Amidst the very many choices for determining the definition of Buddhist identity, the
currently most accepted choice is “self-identification.”
There are currently two major types of Buddhists in America: Asian immigrant Buddhists
32 Lines of Transmission From Asia
and American convert Buddhists.
There are three basic lines of Buddhist transmission to America: Elite or “import” Buddhism, Evangelical or “export” Buddhism,
and Ethnic Buddhism.
33 Key Points You Should Know